logo
Associated Bank sees new hires driving commercial growth

Associated Bank sees new hires driving commercial growth

Yahoo06-05-2025

This story was originally published on Banking Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Banking Dive newsletter.
Having added new bankers and lending verticals, Associated Bank is chasing growth in its commercial bank, even as economic uncertainty lingers.
Green Bay, Wisconsin-based Associated recently hired three relationship managers for its commercial banking team in Kansas City, Missouri. All three come from super-regional U.S. Bank, where Phil Trier, the bank's head of corporate and commercial banking, spent more than two decades before he joined Associated 15 months ago.
'I knew all three of them very well from my predecessor bank, and how talented they are, and really excited about the impact that they're already making in a relatively short period of time,' Trier said.
Phil Trier, Associated Bank's head of corporate and commercial banking
Those three bankers will cover Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas for the $43 billion-asset lender. 'We're going to pause there a little bit, get the level of execution up, and then over time, I could see us growing that team, as well as looking at a more adjacent state kind of hiring strategy,' Trier said.
More broadly, the bank has hired 25 relationship managers across its core footprint in the last two years, who have come from large national, regional and community banks, he said.
'A lot of what we do is driven by talent,' he said. 'Talent is going to lead where we go and help drive those decisions.'
The Midwest lender has completed planned investments in technology and people in its corporate and commercial segment, which serves companies with revenues of $25 million or more and includes specialty businesses such as equipment finance and treasury management.
As part of his strategy, Trier also introduced a new deposit-centric vertical with a national scope, focusing on title and escrow companies, property management firms and some fintech businesses. The banker hired to lead that endeavor, Rick Bruhn, is also a U.S. Bank veteran.
Now, the bank is focused on execution, strengthening Associated's core business in the Midwest and expanding in newer markets.
That growth is fundamental to the bank's strategy: Expanding the commercial bank is geared toward diversifying the bank's balance sheet, as Associated rebalances from being more focused on lower-yielding consumer mortgages and consumer debt, to growing its commercial business and enhancing the products and services it offers those customers, Trier said. That's ultimately designed to bolster profitability.
Especially in what Trier referred to as a 'hyper-competitive market,' talent wins 'can make a material difference,' he said.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Malaysian Tycoon Lim Han Weng In Talks For A Potential Yinson Deal
Malaysian Tycoon Lim Han Weng In Talks For A Potential Yinson Deal

Forbes

time21 minutes ago

  • Forbes

Malaysian Tycoon Lim Han Weng In Talks For A Potential Yinson Deal

A floating production, storage and offloading vessel built by Yinson. Yinson Holdings said its chairman Lim Han Weng is in talks with several parties for a potential deal involving his shareholding in the Kuala Lumpur-listed energy giant. 'Given that the discussions are still at an exploratory stage, there is currently no conclusive indication that the discussions would give rise to a corporate proposal involving Yinson,' the company said in a statement to Bursa Malaysia. While the statement didn't identify the parties Lim is in talks with, Bloomberg reported last week that the Lim family was in exclusive talks with New York-based Stonepeak Partners to take Yinson private in a deal valuing the company at 9 billion ringgit ($2.1 billion). That's at a 38% premium to Yinson's market capitalization of 6.5 billion ringgit. Yinson was founded in 1984 by Lim and his wife, Bah Kim Lian, as a transport and trading company. It has since diversified into energy infrastructure and is now one the world's largest operators of floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels that it leases to oil and gas companies in Angola, Brazil, Ghana and Vietnam. Its FPSO vessel operating unit raised $1 billion in January from the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, British Columbia Investment Management and Singapore-based private equity firm RRJ Capital. In 2020, Yinson diversified into renewable energy and now has solar plants in India and Peru. With a net worth of $480 million, the Lim family ranked no. 41 in Forbes Asia's list of Malaysia's richest that was published in April this year.

XRobotics' countertop robots are cooking up 25,000 pizzas a month
XRobotics' countertop robots are cooking up 25,000 pizzas a month

TechCrunch

time30 minutes ago

  • TechCrunch

XRobotics' countertop robots are cooking up 25,000 pizzas a month

XRobotics thinks it has cracked the code on getting pizza restaurants to adopt robotics. The San Francisco-based robotics company built a countertop robot called xPizza Cube, which is roughly the size of a stackable washing machine, and uses machine learning to apply sauce, cheese and pepperonis to pizza dough. The machines, which lease for $1,300 a month for three years, can make up to 100 pizzas an hour and be retrofitted to work with pies of different sizes and styles like Detroit and Chicago deep dish. 'This saves like almost 70, sometimes 80% of the time for the staff,' Denis Rodionov, the co-founder and CEO of XRobotics, told TechCrunch. 'It is just repeatable work. If you have a pepperoni pizza, you need to place 50 slices of pepperoni one by one.' XRobotics is not the only company that has tried to introduce robotics into the restaurant industry — nor the only one focused on pizza. Zume is the most notable pizza robotics company — if that can be considered its own category. The company raised more than $420 million in venture capital for its robotic pizza trucks, before pivoting to focus on sustainable packaging in 2020, and shuttering entirely in 2023. Rodionov argues that they've been successful where other companies haven't because they aren't trying to fully transform the pizza-making process, as Zume was, but rather build technology to help existing pizza makers save on time and labor. Because they are building assistive technology, as opposed to replacement tech, Robinov said they've been able to keep their device small enough to fit in existing kitchens and priced at a level that pizzerias ranging from mom and pop shops to large chains, both of which the company counts as customers, could afford. Techcrunch event Save $200+ on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Save $200+ on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Boston, MA | REGISTER NOW The company found this out the hard way. The company launched in 2019 and introduced the first version of the technology in 2021. XRobotics' first robot was significantly larger, and could work with more than 20 toppings, and ran into the same problems as their competitors. 'We did a real pilot in the restaurant with our huge machine,' Rodionov said. 'We learned a lot from that, and we figured out we needed a very small, compact solution. It was a bit scary. All the numbers, all the feelings, all the gut said you need to do this, not this. And we just followed the gut and said, 'Yeah, we would go and make a smaller version,' and it was tremendous success.' XRobotics launched their current model in 2023. The company declined to share how many customers it has. The company said its robots are producing 25,000 pizzas per month, but how many customers that translates to is hard to calculate. The startup also recently raised a $2.5 million seed round led by FinSight Ventures with participation from SOSV, MANA Ventures and Republic Capital. Rodionov said the company will use the capital to produce more units and install more robots for customers. XRobotics is committed to the pizza industry, at least for now, Rodionov said, considering the sheer size of the market — there are more than 73,000 pizza chains in the U.S. alone. The company plans to expand to Mexico and Canada next. 'I love pizza, my co-founder too,' Rodionov said. 'We have tested probably any pizza in San Francisco. Also, we test pizza in New York and Chicago.' Rodionov added that Detroit-style pizza, known for its square shape and crispy cheese crust, is his favorite.

Scotiabank Calls Its Head-Office Staff Back in Four Days a Week
Scotiabank Calls Its Head-Office Staff Back in Four Days a Week

Bloomberg

time33 minutes ago

  • Bloomberg

Scotiabank Calls Its Head-Office Staff Back in Four Days a Week

Bank of Nova Scotia plans to call head-office employees back to the office four or more days per week starting in September, citing a push for more collaboration as it follows recent moves by other big lenders including Royal Bank of Canada and JPMorgan Chase & Co. Toronto-based Scotiabank said it will require teams with 'real estate capacity' to increase their days spent working in the office to '4+ days per week,' according to an internal memo sent to Canadian banking employees in the Greater Toronto Area last week. The memo, reviewed by Bloomberg News, wasn't sent to branch workers, who are already working onsite full time.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store